In a BBC Q&A and corresponding interview released Friday, the discreditedÂ ClimategateÂ conspirator revealed a number of surprising insights into his true climate beliefs, the most shocking of which was that 20th-century global warming may not have been unprecedented.Â As the entire anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory is predicated on correlation with rising CO2 levels, this first-such confession from an IPCC senior scientist is nothing short ofearth-shattering

BTW, these updates are running latest at the top, earliest at the bottom.

Update: The crumbling of man-made global warming is accelerating today:

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

…

Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Millsâ€™s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now â€“ suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no â€˜statistically significantâ€™ warming.

I see an avalanche of bad news coming for the alarmists. – end update

The climategate leak of emails, date and code from the UK’s Climactic Research Unit (CRU) last fall continues to ripple destruction through the man-made global warming ‘settled’ science. One of the most interesting exchanges captured in the emails from the late 1990’s, leading up to the IPCC report in 2000 (AR3?), was the battle between Keith Briffa of CRU and Michael Mann, the hockey stick maker. Â I used this exchange as possible evidence that Keith Briffa may have been the person at CRU whose conscience got the best of him and exposed the climategate data to the world.

Here is Briffa reminding everyone that Mann’s fudged data is not conclusive and that CRU’s data clearly indicates there were past periods of similar or even higher warmth than the present day:

â€˜I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards â€œapparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or moreâ€.â€™ … Â â€˜In reality the situation is not quite so simple â€“ I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.â€™

There are a lot more exchanges in the emails that illustrate how Mann’s ‘trick’ of overlaying raw data on top of tree ring estimates was not science but fantasy, and that CRU had study results that confirmed the previous warm periods, the best know of which is the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):

Even allowing for the reduction in the number of represented sites before 1400 (ECS Fig. 2d), and the reduction in overall sample size (ECS Fig. 2b), there is still some evidence for significantly above average growth during two intervals that can be plausibly assigned to the MWP.

…

In any case, the replication in the MWP of the ECS chronology is at least as good as in other published tree-ring estimates of large-scale temperatures (e.g., NH extra-tropical) covering the past 1000+ years.

I remind people of this context of the so called ‘settled’ science because the tarnished ex-head of the CRU has come out and made an admission which completely destroys the foundation of man-made global warming theories:

But he [Dr. Phil Jones] agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.

These statements are likely to be welcomed by people sceptical of man-made climate change who have felt insulted to be labelled by government ministers as flat-earthers and deniers.

There is a companion piece at BBC that covers the exact Q&A for the articles (H/T Bishop Hill). It is an illustration in cherry picking question in order to deny the counter evidence. The BBC makes sure to only ask about warming periods at first, dodging all the intervening cool periods.

Then they ask Jones about the recent cooling over the last 12 years, and Jones claims HIS arbitrary line of ‘significance’ (over 12 years) means the cooling exists, but is not significant. It’s a really lame dodge.

The fact is we are learning that the period 1990-2009 is not much warmer than 1925-1950. If the BBC had asked the question “is the current period from 1990-2009 significantly warmer than the period 1925-1950?” Jones would have had to answer with ‘no’. Because it is not any warmer now than back then (statistically speaking).

In fact, NASA GISS is on record noting that the ten warmest years are spread throughout the last century and are all statistically tied for warmest year. Because of the margin of error in global indexes, there is no way to determine which of the following years are warmer than the others. For the earlier period these are the warmest years in the top ten: 1921,Â 1931,Â 1934, 1938, 1939 – 5 all told. For the latter it is: 1990, 1998, 1999, 2006 – which is 4. And then there is the outlier 1953. These all have a temperature index that are statistically the same – and it proves there is not ‘significant’ reason warming, which blows the AGW theory right out of the water. As I said before, someone call the EPA and Al Gore, their reputations are collapsing.

This is why fools like Chris Mathews who go on TV claiming 2006 was the warmest year on record are simply demonstrating their poor math skills and general ignorance. NASA GISS is adamant that none of these years can be deemed warmer than the others, even if the computed index is a tenth of a degree or so higher than the others (actually, the margin of error limit is nearly .5Â°C).

So what have we learned since climategate? We have learned that the current warm period is not only stalled but has been cooling. We have learned that statistically it is no warmer now than a 70 years ago, before the huge increase in human CO2 production. And thanks to Dr Phil Jones finally being honest about the science, we know there is no scientific proof today is any warmer than the two previous warm periods (Medieval and Roman) that have been established science for a couple hundred years now.

[…] A.J, Strata: “So what have we learned since climategate? We have learned that the current warm period is not only stalled but has been cooling. We have learned that statistically it is no warmer now than a 7o years ago, before the huge increase in human CO2 production. And thanks to Dr Phil Jones finally being honest about the science, we know there is no scientific proof today is any warmer than the two previous warm periods (Medieval and Roman) that have been established science for a couple hundred years now.” var addthis_pub = ''; var addthis_language = 'en';var addthis_options = 'email, favorites, digg, delicious, myspace, google, facebook, reddit, live, more'; […]

I believe this has come about partly because of Climategate, but also in large extent because of the failure at Copenhagen. This kind of collapse (it is a great example of a cascade failure) is what I had expected to see this year, and here is why – up until Copenhagen, the AGW movement at its core was held together by the promise of floods of money promised to come in from nebulous sources – traders would manipulate carbon exchanges, governments would milk the cap and trade taxes, there was going to be endless amounts of new green jobs and huge new scientific grants for everyone. Any scientist who dared to speak against the “consensus” threatened to unravel the entire gravy train, therefore the pressure to conform was immense. Anyone who spoke out was not only threatening their own careers but the careers and hopes of every one of their colleagues.

So what happened at Copenhagen? The true central lie behind this entire movement, which was the idea that there would be endless amounts of free money for everyone involved, collapsed. The problem with this lie was that sooner or later somebody had to be willing to pay. The collapse at Copenhagen proved that no one, no one anywhere in the world, was willing to pay. And suddenly the motive for thousands of scientists across the world to stay committed to this fraud collapsed – and now, dozens of reports and studies and people who knew things and were keeping quiet had no more motive to keep that info bottled up, and it has all come tumbling out. All of the info we have seen was known by someone a year ago – the fraud in the 2007 IPCC paper was recognized by many soon after it came out, but it was never publicized. Why has this gone mainstream so suddenly? Because Copenhagen made it personally cost-free to talk openly.

And this is also why the AGW movement will never recover. As I said, Cascade Failure. People underneath the serial liars will now see the path to advancement lies through taking down their old bosses any way they can – think there aren’t a cozen second tier players all wishing to retire Phil Jones personally and take his job for themselves? Everyone involved had better be watching fulltime for the knives in the back that are coming.

Armor making! Nobody talked about armor making in that article. All those damned armor factories in the middle ages, with their smoke stacks pouring out CO2 and “particulate matter”…that’s probably when the ozone hole began.

I wonder why Jones now admits that these arguments of the environmental realists are valid. One possibility is that his data are in a worse shape than he says, or that so much was falsified that they even have destroyed the data. And he knows there will be an uproar when they inform about it. So maybe he thinks that the pressure to start criminal prosecutions will nog lighter if he seems to be reasonable.